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Page 9
A cold, piercing air seemed to blow right through her. Walking to the near
corner, she paused to look around. Down the main street flowed a leisurely
stream of pedestrians, horses, cars, extending between two blocks of low
buildings. Across from where she stood lay a vacant lot, beyond which began
a line of neat, oddly constructed houses, evidently residences of the town.
And then lifting her gaze, instinctively drawn by something obstructing the
sky line, she was suddenly struck with surprise and delight.
"Oh! how perfectly splendid!" she burst out.
Two magnificent mountains loomed right over her, sloping up with majestic
sweep of green and black timber, to a ragged tree-fringed snow area that
swept up cleaner and whiter, at last to lift pure glistening peaks, noble
and sharp, and sunrise-flushed against the blue.
Carley had climbed Mont Blanc and she had seen the Matterhorn, but they had
never struck such amaze and admiration from her as these twin peaks of her
native land.
"What mountains are those?" she asked a passer-by.
"San Francisco Peaks, ma'am," replied the man.
"Why, they can't be over a mile away!" she said.
"Eighteen miles, ma'am," he returned, with a grin. "Shore this Arizonie air
is deceivin'."
"How strange," murmured Carley. "It's not that way in the Adirondacks."
She was still gazing upward when a man approached her and said the stage
for Oak Creek Canyon would soon be ready to start, and he wanted to know if
her baggage was ready. Carley hurried back to her room to pack.
She had expected the stage would be a motor bus, or at least a large
touring car, but it turned out to be a two-seated vehicle drawn by a team
of ragged horses. The driver was a little wizen-faced man of doubtful
years, and he did not appear obviously susceptible to the importance of
his passenger. There was considerable freight to be hauled, besides
Carley's luggage, but evidently she was the only passenger.
"Reckon it's goin' to be a bad day," said the driver. "These April days
high up on the desert are windy an' cold. Mebbe it'll snow, too. Them
clouds hangin' around the peaks ain't very promisin'. Now, miss, haven't
you a heavier coat or somethin'?"
"No, I have not," replied Carley. "I'll have to stand it. Did you say this
was desert?"
"I shore did. Wal, there's a hoss blanket under the seat, an' you can have
that," he replied, and, climbing to the seat in front of Carley, he took up
the reins and started the horses off at a trot.
At the first turning Carley became specifically acquainted with the
driver's meaning of a bad day. A gust of wind, raw and penetrating, laden
with dust and stinging sand, swept full in her face. It came so suddenly
that she was scarcely quick enough to close her eyes. It took considerable
clumsy effort on her part with a handkerchief, aided by relieving tears, to
clear her sight again. Thus uncomfortably Carley found herself launched on
the last lap of her journey.
All before her and alongside lay the squalid environs of the town. Looked
back at, with the peaks rising behind, it was not unpicturesque. But the
hard road with its sheets of flying dust, the bleak railroad yards, the
round pens she took for cattle corrals, and the sordid debris littering the
approach to a huge sawmill,--these were offensive in Carley's sight. From a
tall dome-like stack rose a yellowish smoke that spread overhead, adding to
the lowering aspect of the sky. Beyond the sawmill extended the open
country sloping somewhat roughly, and evidently once a forest, but now a
hideous bare slash, with ghastly burned stems of trees still standing, and
myriads of stumps attesting to denudation.
The bleak road wound away to the southwest, and from this direction came
the gusty wind. It did not blow regularly so that Carley could be on her
guard. It lulled now and then, permitting her to look about, and then
suddenly again whipping dust into her face. The smell of the dust was as
unpleasant as the sting. It made her nostrils smart. It was penetrating,
and a little more of it would have been suffocating. And as a leaden gray
bank of broken clouds rolled up the wind grew stronger and the air colder.
Chilled before, Carley now became thoroughly cold.
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